kordewiner.com

Heinrich Kordewiner

Welcome to the home on the web of Heinrich Kordewiner. Google is great, but here You will discover some hints to find just more online resources from and about me. All stuff sorted by the real-world geographic position of the server racks.
Hnr, September 2016

What is "Kordewiner"?

My rare surname "Kordewiner" is the Middle High German word of the English Cordwainer and the French Cordonnier - alternate German spellings in the middle ages were "Kurdewaner" or "Korduwan". Nowadays there is only the word "shoemaker" in the German ("Schoster" in Plattdüütsch and "Schuster" or "Schuhmacher" in Hochdeutsch) and the Dutch ("Schoenmaker") language, because most 'French sounds' and lookalikes in German were eliminated in the 19th century, following the Révolution française and the Napoleonic Wars.

But in the Netherlands the surname Kordewiner / Cordewiener / etc. survived - maybe this is special to the former Fench Département de la Meuse-Inférieure (1795-1804) and/or the Meuse–Rhine Euroregion from nowadays. Many of my ancestors come from the southeast of the province Limburg of the Netherlands and from the district of Aachen in Germany. Some of them worked as coal miner and Steiger in the 19th and 20th century in the "Oostelijke Mijnstreek" (NL) and "Wurmrevier" (D) on both sides of the border in e.g. Kerkrade (where my grandparents Anna Maria and Heinrich married on Januar 30, 1929) and Eygelshoven (where my father Leonhard "Leo" Wilhelm Maria was born on December 22, 1929; † October 27, 1996 Ostbevern).